The man who heard voices & noise film

The Man Who Heard Voices--the story of the making of Lady in the Water--is a surprisingly good book on filmmaking. I thought it was going to be a post-mortem on M. Night Shyamalan's career but it was filled with astute observations about the filmmaking process. Also, contrary to what others have said, I thought the book painted a flattering portrait of Night. Sure he has an ego, but he also comes across as dedicated, willing to take chances, even admirable. Actually I relate to this portrait of him a lot.

Lady in the Water itself has an essential problem: it wants to be about belief and yet it doesn't require any belief from its audience. Once we see the scrunt (the grass-haired wolf) we know that we're entering into a supernatural space. No belief is required. And yet, I'm sure M. Night was trying to avoid the tired "is it real or is it not?" take on the subject. There are two formal problems at work:

1. How do you create a film with an ambiguous sense of reality without making another tired statement on simulation (e.g., The Matrix, Truman Show, etc.) or psychology (e.g., Basic Instinct, Gas Light, Occurrence at Owl Creek, etc.).

2. How do you deal with the tough problem of showing characters enter into belief? If the characters take too long to believe in the story elements (that we know they must believe in) we get annoyed. And yet, if they believe too quickly, their lack of skepticism seems unrealistic.

Curiously, both of these problems are ones I was working on in noise film. For us, the floating spinner is the "scrunt." It's supposed to look magical enough to evoke belief. And yet, unlike the scrunt, it's supposed to look like something that could possibly exist in reality.

The principal arc of noise film is Ben falling deeper and deeper into manic belief. The end itself is my take creating a satisfactory ending while still retaining a sense of ambiguity. In Lady, as in most commercial film, the end of the film tells us what is real. In the typical art film (e.g., a David Lynch film) we never know what is real. Noise film tries to end up somewhere in the middle.